By Janine DavisRecord Staff WriterA local project that began three years ago to encourage young children to have a lifetime love of reading celebrated its success Sunday afternoon with record donations of custom-built bookcases and books presented to dozens of families.The Warren County Bookcase Project gave sturdy hand-crafted bookcases — each inscribed with the recipient’s name — to 85 children during a ceremony earlier this week held at Wright City Middle School. Each child also received his or her own book bag filled with books and crayons. Many of the 2,300 books were given by Michelle Sprague in memory of her son Matthew who loved reading.“This is our third year,” said Rich Lagemann, who spearheads the project with 12 other project committee members.“We started that first year expecting to build 40 bookcases, and ended up meeting a demand for 65. The second year, we gave away 75 bookcases, and this year we’re up to 85.”Lagemann spoke at the center of several rows of gleaming new bookcases that spanned the length of the middle school gymnasium.Both the Wright City R-II and Warren County R-III school districts are involved in the program, as are Warren County Head Start, Youth in Need and the Daniel Boone Retired Teachers Association.Each bookcase is sponsored by an individual or couple in the community. Lagemann said 60 percent of the bookcases are sponsored by current or retired teachers. In many cases, sponsors had signed the back of their recipient’s bookcase and written with a Sharpie an inspiring dedication.Lagemann said the anticipated costs of the bookcase materials spiked this year from $50 each to $58, but that a dozen or so people and groups had stepped up to make up the shortfall.“This is a very generous community, whose members keep coming through for us,” Lagemann told a crowd of several hundred families, children and sponsors gathered for the ceremony. He thanked several local and national companies that helped in the construction and finishing of the bookcases and in helping the organization promote literacy.As part of the ceremony, parents and kids took a pledge to read each day. Then as names were called, children, parents and sponsors met up at the child’s bookcase in a rush to see and touch their own handsome furniture and books to begin filling its shelves.One educator who spoke summed up the benefits of reading in a quote from Dr. Seuss: “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”Bookcase project celebrates success